Mississippi Today
Federal judge places Jackson sewer control under JXN Water
Over the weekend, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate, who about10 months ago made Ted Henifin the new face of Jackson’s drinking water system, gave Henifin the keys to the city’s sewer system as well.
Wingate, as well as city and state officials, indicated his support in late July for Henifin and his company, JXN Water, to take over the sewer system. The federal government then held a month-long public input period, and received comments from 666 people. Of those comments, the Department of Justice said that 95% supported Henifin taking over the sewer system, 4% were critical and 1% listed as “other.”
After the parties in the case — which include Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency, the DOJ, and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality — had a chance to review the comments, Wingate officially approved the order on Saturday.
Since 2013, the federal government has held the city’s sewer system under a consent decree over constant infrastructure failures. The consent decree requires Jackson to make certain improvements, yet the city has failed to do most of the required work since then because of a lack of funding, Jackson officials maintain. For years, Jackson has struggled to prevent untreated or partially treated sewage from entering the Pearl River, as well as overflows that form streams along city streets.
“There are about 215 overflows right now across the city, and they’re in neighborhoods where people live close by,” Henifin said in a press release. “It’s just a mess, and we’re going to get at it right away.”
The order is set to last four years, but could end sooner in the case of another consent decree, or if JXN Water completes its assigned list of projects before then. The stipulated order requires JXN Water to submit quarterly reports, and hold public meetings within 30 days of each report.
With the new responsibility, Henifin and JXN Water have a $1.126 million budget for the first year of work, which includes $750,000 for contracting and consultant services, $280,000 for staffing, and $96,000 for Henifin’s compensation.
The new order includes a list of 11 priority projects — listed in Appendix C — for JXN Water to address, which include rehabilitating the city’s wastewater treatment plants and sewer interceptors, as well as making repairs to 215 “emergency sewer” failures throughout the city.
Prior to coming to Jackson and before his work with the U.S. Water Alliance, Henifin led the Hampton Roads Sanitation District in Virginia, which handled wastewater for 1.7 million residents.
The public comments criticizing the new sewer order centered on issues that advocates have raised about Henifin’s work with the drinking water system — which he took over last November through a similar process — such as local contracting and financial transparency.
The sewer system order largely remained the same after review of those comments, but the parties agreed to address transparency concerns by requiring financial disclosure of all accounts that fund sewer projects in the quarterly reports.
In regard to contracting, Henifin said that he intends to seek out local and minority businesses to work on sewer projects. He added that he’ll continue work with the national engineering firm Veolia, which has three years left on its pre-existing contract to operate the city’s wastewater treatment plants.
In the past, city officials estimated that fixing Jackson’s sewer system would cost around $1 billion. Henifin has said he hopes that improvements to the city’s water bill collections will eventually help fund sewer improvements. The order also notes $125 million in available funding through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as well as $8 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars that will be partially matched by the state.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Jimmie ‘Jay’ Lee’s family one step closer to closure after discovery of remains
More than two years after Jimmie “Jay” Lee went missing, the remains of the University of Mississippi student and well-known member of Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community has been found.
On Wednesday, the Oxford Police Department released a statement to social media that the state Crime Lab confirmed the human skeletal remains found in Carroll County over the weekend belong to Lee.
“The Oxford Police Department made a commitment to finding Jay, no matter how long it took,” Chief Jeff McCutchen said in the release.
The confirmation comes after days of rumors flying around Grenada County, where Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., the University of Mississippi graduate charged with Lee’s murder, is from.
An object found with Lee’s remains fueled the speculation: A gold necklace with his name on it, Mississippi Today reported on Monday. The nameplate matched jewelry that Lee wore in videos on his Instagram that were posted two days before his disappearance on July 8, 2022.
The Carroll County Sheriff’s Department said in a press release that deer hunters stumbled on Lee’s remains in a wooded gully on Saturday, Feb. 1. The Oxford police statement did not include additional information about who found the remains or how.
“While this part of the investigation is complete, additional work remains,” police stated. “However, we are unable to provide further details at this time.”
It remains to be seen how this discovery will impact the case against Herrington, who was charged with capital murder and taken to trial by the Lafayette County district attorney in December. One juror refused to convict due to the lack of a body, resulting in a mistrial.
Lafayette County District Attorney Ben Creekmore has said he intends to retry Herrington. He could not be reached by press time.
In Oxford, Lee’s disappearance sparked a movement organized by Lee’s college friends called Justice for Jay Lee. On Wednesday, an Instagram account for the group posted a video of Lee dancing, his arm in the air, his long, blonde weave and sparkly silver skirt shimmering to club music.
The discovery brings members of Lee’s family one step closer to closure, said Tayla Carey, Lee’s sister.
“Speaking for myself, I can say it does bring me some type of happiness knowing he’s not out there alone anymore,” she said.
The next step is to celebrate Lee’s life by giving him the memorial he deserves, but Carey said she won’t feel closure until justice occurs with a new trial.
“It’s been a long two and a half years,” Carey said. “A very long, long, long two and a half years.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Health Department cuts clinical services at some county clinics following insufficient funding from Legislature
After the Legislature failed to give the state health department the funding it needed to fully staff county health departments, some no longer offer clinical services and the agency may close others.
County health departments now offer one of three levels of care as a part of a plan to ensure their sustainability in the face of limited and unpredictable funding.
Eight county health departments no longer offer the clinical services they have traditionally provided, like immunizations, preventive screening and reproductive health services. Instead, they serve as a connection point to other health departments with higher levels of care.
The reorganization is the county health departments’ “pathway for survival,” State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney told Mississippi Today.
Previously, clinicians rotated between county health departments, he said. The new system establishes consistent levels of care.
“That didn’t work,” he said. “But this is working.”
Health departments are now classified into three levels:
- Level 3 clinics, or “super clinics,” have a doctor or nurse practitioner on staff. They offer a full range of services, including family planning, immunizations, disease screenings and programming for mothers and children.
- Level 2 clinics have a nurse on staff and offer limited family planning services, immunization, disease screenings, programming for mothers and children and telehealth appointments.
- Level 1 clinics do not have a clinician on staff, and offer referrals, record services, federal programming for women and children and help people schedule rides to higher level clinics.
Some clinics offer Level 2 services on some days of the week and Level 3 services on others.
!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();
The new system aims to concentrate resources and ensure that every region of Mississippi has access to needed health services, said Dr. Renia Dotson, Mississippi’s state epidemiologist and the director of the recently created Center for Public Health Transformation, the health department division responsible for overseeing the changes.
It utilizes telehealth and transportation services – like the department’s partnership with Uber – to ensure that patients can access a doctor or nurse practitioner even in health department locations without one on staff.
In just over one year, the health department doubled the number of nurse practitioners it employs to over 30 and increased the number of Level 3 clinics to 15, said Dotson. She said the health department aims to continue expanding the number of Level 3 clinics.
Drastic budget cuts in 2017 forced the agency to shutter county health departments and lay off staff. The agency has spent the last eight years rebounding from the cuts.
In 2023, the Legislature denied the health department’s $9 million budget request to hire the nurses needed to fully staff county health departments and a program that puts nurses in the homes of low-income pregnant women with high-risk pregnancies.
The Mississippi State Department of Health began implementing a tiered approach to county health departments’ level of care not long afterwards. The agency has been making the changes for the past 18 months, said Edney.
No county health departments have yet been closed as a result of the changes, said Dotson, but there may be some areas where it is not possible to continue operating a county health department. The agency is currently in the process of evaluating the level of care that is needed and that the department is able to support in each county, and considering other health services offered in an area when making determinations on need.
“We’ll make an effort to maintain a presence in every county if that is feasible,” she said.
The agency’s website does not currently include information about the reorganization or provide information about which level of care each county health department provides.
The Department of Health made a meager budget request this year of just $4.8 million to train early-career doctors and help Mississippians enroll in health insurance. It did not include any specific requests for county health department funding or funding positions for doctors or nurses.
The agency is working to create margins in a tight budget by reducing its overhead, Edney told Mississippi Today.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1994
Feb. 5, 1994
A jury convicted Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers after seeing evidence that included Beckwith’s fingerprint on the murder weapon and hearing six witnesses share how he had bragged about killing Evers. The judge sentenced Beckwith to life in prison.
Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers, had prayed for this day, and now that it had come, she could hardly believe it. “All I want to say is, ‘Yay, Medgar, yay!’”
She wiped away tears. “My God, I don’t have to say accused assassin anymore. I can say convicted assassin, who laughed and said, ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? That’s one n—– who isn’t going to come back.’ But what he failed to realize was that Medgar was still alive in spirit and through each and every one of us who wanted to see justice done.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
-
News from the South - Kentucky News Feed5 days ago
WKU Mourns Loss Of Cross Country/Track & Field Head Coach Brent Chumbley
-
News from the South - Georgia News Feed7 days ago
“Very hard to believe”, locals react to arrest Lincoln County commissioner in child molestation investigation
-
News from the South - Georgia News Feed3 days ago
Oysters for Autism: shucking, sipping, and supporting the Lowcountry community
-
Local News18 hours ago
How law enforcement agencies are keeping New Orleans safe ahead of the Super Bowl
-
News from the South - Florida News Feed5 days ago
Air traffic controllers were initially offered buyouts and told to consider leaving government
-
Local News Video5 days ago
Gulfport Combat Readiness Training Center hosts Sentry South-Southern Strike 2025
-
Local News18 hours ago
Mississippi made players shine on the NFL’s biggest stage in New Orleans for Super Bowl 59
-
News from the South - Louisiana News Feed2 days ago
Second federal judge issues temporary order blocking Trump spending freeze • Louisiana Illuminator